Russia’s Wartime Economy isn’t as Weak as it Looks

“Projected on mega screens and across social media, the long-awaited release of three female Israeli hostages, in captivity for 15 months, showed us the power of the image, a tool that is especially amplified during wartime,” said Dr Burcu Ozcelik, senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute. “The visuality of armed Hamas fighters seemingly in charge of the handover operation was choreographed to send a message, ‘We are still in control of Gaza, we are undefeated.’”...Dr Ozcelik puts it in a broader context. “Israeli officials say that two of Hamas’s 24 battalions are operational,” she said. “Over the course of the war, senior Hamas commanders and trained rank and file fighters have been killed, and weapons arsenals and military capabilities degraded. While Hamas is reported to have recruited more men to join its fight against Israel, this draws upon an angry and motivated, but poorly trained and inexperienced, pool of recruits from Gaza.”

“For a campaign of this duration, which is a year’s worth of fighting in a heavily urban environment where you have an adversary that is hiding in amongst that environment, then you would expect an extremely high level of damage,” said Matthew Savill, director of military sciences at the Royal United Services Institute, a British think-tank. Savill said that it was difficult to draw a broad conclusion about the nature of Israel’s campaign. To do so, he said, would require each strike and operation to be assessed to determine whether they adhered to the laws of armed conflict and whether all were proportional, but he did not think the scorched earth description was accurate.

While these cable episodes highlight the vulnerability of crucial offshore infrastructure and the difficulties in prosecuting sabotage, analysts say that they are part of a worrying new security climate in frontline areas near Ukraine and Taiwan that could easily escalate in the coming years as Trump takes office. “These hybrid tactics that we’re seeing from China and Russia are meant to create favorable conditions for them if an opening presents itself to carry out a larger move,” Sari Arho Havren, an associate fellow at London's Royal United Services Institute, told RFE/RL. “It seems there is also a desire to signal some red lines to Washington as Trump comes into office.”